Shadow Tactics standalone expansion Aiko's Choice is out now
Into the light
Aiko's Choice, the standalone expansion of the wonderful real-time tactics of Shadow Tactics, is out now. It's five years since the original game, so if you yearn for more sneaking and stabbing in Edo Japan, then here it is.
You can pick Aiko's Choice up from Steam now for £15.29/€17.99 after a 10% launch discount. If you never played the original, it's also currently on sale via a bundle or on its own for a 90% discount of £3.49. That's an absurdly good game for an absurdly low price.
Matthew already got his hands on the hilt of the expansion, and loved his time with it:
A self-contained island is a perfect showcase for what Shadow Tactics is about. You swim around the outside, submerged but for a bamboo snorkel, getting a read on sightlines and confirming that, yes, every guard falls under the watchful eye of another. And so begins the vital first step: the first kill that weakens the surveillance network. Perhaps you find a secluded beach and use Yuki’s flute to lure a guard to a pressure-activated dart trap. Maybe you fling a vial of Aiko’s blinding perfume at a sniper and shank a nearby guard while his view cone recovers. Or do you program all three to leap from the ocean and stab the guards in the neck at the press of a key, ending all three cries of alarm at once? Experimenting, and seeing how each new island layout negates the previous’ winning strategies, is all part of the fun.
Despite the name, Aiko's Choice gives you all of the game's original heroes to control - something which the original game did only once. This is part of why it's designed to be played by people who have already finished the original, too - these missions throw you into the deepend of the game's stealth systems.
Developers Mimimi spent the time between Shadow Tactics and this expansion making the similarly excellent Desperados 3, and are now working on a new game with their own IP, codenamed "sweet potato".